Longtime Fifth Ave. Bar Shut After Shooting

DA: Owner agrees to close tavern, sell liquor license

By Jason Togyer
The Tube City Almanac
March 06, 2025
Posted in: Crime and Police News

A Downtown bar that was the site of a fatal shooting on Feb. 26 will close permanently, and its liquor license will be sold.

Tube City Cafe, in the 900 block of Fifth Avenue, will close through a mutual agreement between its owner, the city, and Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. The deal was announced Thursday by Zappala.

The bar is one of the oldest in the city, having opened just two years after the repeal of the 18th Amendment.

“I’m appreciative that we were able to reach an agreement that puts the safety of people and first responders in McKeesport first,” Zappala said in a prepared release. “Thankfully, the Nuisance Bar Task Force and our law enforcement partners remain diligent in protecting our community from these dangers.”

The bar has been the site of a number of calls over the past two years, Zappala said, including firearms violations, fights and narcotics complaints.

On the morning of Feb. 26, a customer of the bar, Darnell Ross, 37, of the city, was shot multiple times following an argument with another patron. The alleged shooter then fled the scene. Ross died a short time later at UPMC McKeesport hospital.

Allegheny County police have charged Floyd Noell, 39, of Glassport with homicide, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with evidence and unlawful possession of a firearm in connection with Ross’s death.

In an affidavit of probable cause, police said that they obtained video from surveillance cameras both inside and outside the bar that showed the moments leading up to the confrontation, as well as its aftermath.

The affidavit alleges that multiple witnesses also identified the shooter as Noell.

Zappala said officials from the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Nuisance Bar Task Force, McKeesport Police and the Pennsylvania State Police Liquor Control Enforcement Unit met with the bar’s owners following Ross’s death to discuss their concerns about the establishment.

Zappala said the owner and council agreed to permanently close the bar in the best interests of the community. The license will be sold at a later date, Zappala said.

According to city directories and Pennsylvania state business records, Tube City Cafe has been open since at least 1935, only two years after Prohibition ended, and has been under its current ownership since 1981. State records indicate that the liquor license is currently held by Theresa and Roy Bricker and David Blanchard.

McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko said the authorities and the bar’s owner came to an appropriate agreement.

“As much as we want to see businesses thriving here in McKeesport, if a particular establishment is putting the lives of its patrons at risk, I see no other option than to shut it down in the best interest of our community,” Cherepko said. “We cannot continue to allow places that harbor criminal activities to continue to do so.”

Noell is currently being held in Allegheny County Jail without bond pending a preliminary hearing March 14 in Pittsburgh Municipal Court.

Originally published March 06, 2025.

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